Saturday, September 19, 2009

Libertarianism 101 and 102

Sigh. This is why I don’t trust anything but sourced in-context quotes when listening to accusations of un-libertarianism. What I said was “I saw some unsettling stuff from him today on school prayer”. What I saw was him ridiculing a judge who threw out a moment-of-silence law, and joking that atheist kids spontaneously cry if in a room where praying occurs. That is nowhere near advocating “mandatory prayer in government schools”.

It’s all fun and games until a gun murders your kid. So anybody who jokes about the use of guns must be joking about the murder of your kid.

Time to re-enroll for Lib 101, Paulie.

Here’s a preview of the final exam essay question: if a terrorist threatens you or your kids because of collateral damage from your well-intentioned acts of self-defense, does that mean you shouldn’t defend yourself?

You’re excused from the final only if you bring a note from the patent office sharing your magical invention that guarantees you that your well-intentioned acts of self-defense never cause collateral damage.

You automatically flunk the exam if you assume that the question is about recent contingent history, instead of about universal libertarian principles. Which are universal. That’s why we call them principles.

If you’re trying to suggest some kind of moral equivalence between 1) overthrowing a genocidal neighbor-annexing totalitarian and 2) slashing stewardesses’ throats so you can kill 3000 civilian infidels, then I don’t see how that’s supposed to convince me Beck shouldn’t ever criticize domestic support for violence against America.

By the way, I transcribed what Beck said is his central point in your clip above: “Ron Paul’s supporters are tapping into something that is very real, something that I’ve talked about on this program for a very long time: the rising tide of disenfranchisement in this country. It’s coming from all sides of the political spectrum. If that feeling of disenfranchisement leads to political discussion, then our system works perfectly. But if fringe elements take that disenfranchisement and turn it into violence, we endanger the freedoms we’re supposedly all fighting for.”

Thus it is pure bullshit to claim that “Beck opened up his show segment by inferring that the U.S. military should be used to silence domestic dissent against the war”. Please think a little more critically before you cut and paste more stuff that leftists simply made up.